Melody Smith Jones

Today is the last day of the July-June fiscal year, which means many organizations, such as Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and Ford Motor Company, are winding down the period covered under their annual Sustainability Report.  There are many reasons that these organizations choose to release sustainability reports.  Many believe these reports lend an air of […]

I attended a webinar today entitled “Can Social Media Save Lives?”. This webinar was organized by the HealthWorks Collective. While a good portion of the agenda rehashed commonly used statistics about the use of social media in healthcare and the fact that there is still a lot of confusion about social media as a tool […]

There are many benefits to Health IT, but when it comes to these business drivers there is one that leads the charge: increased efficiency. The motivation to increase efficiency is on the lips of healthcare executives in both provider and health plan circles across the nation. Controlling and being aware of the cost of care […]

Sometimes when I write about social media in healthcare I imagine a make-believe healthcare technology purist that I’ve conjured up rolling her eyes at me. She scoffs at my adding to the zettabytes of digital data on one of the more “softball” technology topics. What does social media have to do with “real” healthcare technology […]

We all remember when IBM’s Watson beat the two all time grand champions of Jeopardy (if you don’t then see the video above). However, as Watson moves into various industries we wonder what Watson would look like in the healthcare industry. Today we got the answer to that question from Randall Wilcox of IBM at […]

We are at the AHIP Conference this week, which is one of our favorite events of the year. It is good fun to meet with the many tech-savvy professionals that make up the health insurance industry. This year we meet as many regulatory pressures and deadlines are closing in, which is certain to ignite some […]

Join us Wednesday, June 29, 2011 12:00 p.m. CT for the Perficient Webinar “12 Things NOT to do on a Portal Project” Register Now! We’ve all attended our share of webinars and conference sessions talking about best practices in portal and collaboration projects and the things everyone should do to ensure their portal is a […]

Please join us Wednesday, June 22nd at 1:00 EST for our upcoming webinar, “Healthcare & Life Sciences – Using Microsoft SharePoint for Contract Lifecycle Management” For many companies around the world contracts and agreements govern the way that they conduct business with external parties such as suppliers, customers and partners. Contracts contain milestones, commitments and […]

Healthcare providers and health plans are increasingly turning to business intelligence and the data warehouse to unleash the power data. This is a relief since poor data quality increases uncertainty and risk with an ultimate impact on care outcomes, efficiency, regulatory compliance, and financial effectiveness. I’ve said it time and time again (and have heard […]

The overriding theme in healthcare is data integration. Health information exchange, accountable care, interoperability and the merging healthcare industry are forming an environment where electronic patient data is being combined at a record pace. With dreams of a national patient record database, initiatives are brought forth in hopes that we can improve care, decrease costs, […]

Health IT and the Doctor-Patient Relationship This is the last in our series of interviews with Dr. Nanette Nuessle. In this interview, we discussed the technologies Dr. Nuessle uses as a concierge physician. This discussion evolved into an discourse over whether healthcare technology helps or hinders the important relationship between patients and physicians. Dr. Nuessle […]

Helping Health IT End Users Adapt to Change This is the second in our series of interviews with Dr. Nanette Nuessle. In this interview, we discussed physician use of healthcare technology and how doctors cope with technology changes in their practice of medicine. What I found most insightful about this particular interview was her description […]